No emails!

‘There are no emails in the box for you,

There are no emails,’ it said,

That message had sat on my page for days

Like a note for the newly dead,

I sat and stared at the vacant screen

Like a litany for the lost,

All of my friends were a cyber dream

As I soon found out, to my cost.

 

My thoughts went back for many a year

When the friends that I had were real,

The ones I’d meet in the supermart

The ones I could see, and feel,

The friends that I’d had of flesh and blood

Who had drifted into my past,

Did they sit and stare at an empty screen

And hope for a word at last?

 

When I was away they had written screeds

And sent by the penny post,

While I’d sit nights by a reading lamp

Replying, not all, but most,

We told each other of babies born,

Of fights we’d had with the boss,

And laughed together when I came home

Over dreams and the schemes we tossed.

 

But as life went on and the world got old

Our friends had drifted away,

While all of us got too busy then

With the fax and the phone to play,

We would close our doors when the day was done

And stare at a silent screen,

Would reach on out to the people there

Who lived in the cyber scene.

 

And we forged new friendships over the net

As we roamed in the world out wide,

We made us hundreds of friends out there

In towns and the countryside,

It was mind to mind, there was nothing else

No flesh to press, no kiss,

We knew that we’d never meet, no hugs

Our link, a computer dish!

 

I sit alone and I wait for you,

Your messages on the screen,

That make me feel I’m connected, though

The best I can do is dream,

For a single glitch in the i.s.p.

Will stop the electron flow,

And cut us off from our new-found friends

When the email box says, ‘No!’

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Dhaye]

How funny that I also do that when I emailed someone, I wait for long hours at the front of my computer monitor, just to be dismayed by the truth that he hasn't read my mail. Another day will be the same...wishing for an email on my screen.
That is what we call HOPE.

[Akleja]

This appeals to me in so many levels... It's beautiful.

[David Scott]

I've been disconnected from the net for days. I know what you are saying. Our world is no less real even if it lacks physical proximity. Just like real life, friends seldom respond to us sitting alone waiting for their contact. Energy and intrest beget more energy in return. When we stop reaching out nobody reaches for us. In real life and in cyber life.
Your poem shows the truth of isolation and introversion.
I enjoyed the flow and feel as you addressed a serious topic with a light tone.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

wow, this has such sadness in it...the way friends lose touch...when it isn't physical distance...just a "being too busy with life"

reminds me of emily dickinson's "because i could not stop for death"---

there is nothing like face to face contact...

and true friends that we keep in touch with...especially in this world of facebook friends where we have 2,378 friends we don't even know.
we need to treasure and keep in touch with the ones we do.

[Girl Friday (Sarah W.)]

Such a truly written tale... I've often thought on this very topic. The more "techy" the world becomes, the more sterile it becomes. It is as if human contact (the real kind, of eyes and flesh and voice) is slowly being phased out and we're all going to be locked up in our homes one day devoid of anything truly real.

You wrote this in a very "sing song" way, which I liked, because of the startling juxtaposition to the content itself which is truly very sad. Well done...I'm a big fan of this one!

[Marshal Gebbie]

Right on the nail you old b*****d!

[Peter H]

just wow it allud's to the modern social age so keenly and it rhymed to meticulously , this is a masterful poem i loved how you put it foward

[gabrielle]

This internet age opens our eyes to vast information and easy communication access for everyone but this technology has also adversely revolutionized our way of interpersonal relation/communication with others.
Your piece has effectively encapsulated the ways of the past and our ways of today, in terms of communication. While I always look forward for e-mails from friends and families, i still want personal interaction with them.This is truly worth pondering write.

[sue]

I like it and its so true when feel got better friends on the computer who care than own friends.

[Forget Me Not]

I really like this. It definatly describes our society now. We all rely so much on the internet to keep in contact with one another. It is strange how the world has changed, isn't it? Sometimes I wish that the internet wouldn't have existed. But then, I wouldn't be sitting here, typing to you, now would I? I would be unable to see such poems and stories as this site supplies. Yet, I'd have so many more friends that are physically there. I'd be able to reach out to them, have happy times. But instead, we are all trapped within this awful pixelated world.

[Lena M. P.]

Funny. Afraid I'm the bad one in this scenario. I have got to get better. My friends probably think I fell off the earth or something. LOL